How You Like Them Bananas?

Une Banane Blog Provides More Than Daily Fibre

In His infinite wisdom, God once said an incredibly long time ago, “Man does not live by bread alone,” and as such, a daily dose of the creative is essential for Man–and Woman–to survive.

Pick some daily fruit from Montreal collective blog Une Banane, founded by Danny Demers and Mike Mason, both of whom are recent Dawson College graphic design graduates. Add classmate David Oliva, and you have “Le Team.”

While still in its infancy, the blog is kept alive by the delivery of short creative visuals and crafts by guests, contributors, and members of Le Team, who produce one project a week and also manage the content of the blog.

They embrace a commitment to high quality works, updated five days a week. A visit a week will guarantee a fine collection of pleasures to consume–in the same manner as one would at a gallery vernissage.

Une Banane is comprised of an eclectic array of works by definition of their collective. The mediums vary between graphic design and photography, with an odd GIF or illustration thrown in too. On one day, there may be a homemade junk mail booklet. Another day, there may be a composite photography work à la The Indian in the Cupboard.

It was after their graduation last spring where this all began. Le Team immediately got to work and the website was launched on Aug. 1. As Mason explained, he and his classmates always spoke about what they were going to do after Dawson, whether it be finding a job or starting their careers, but he had a different plan.

“I always had in mind that I wanted to find a group of people who were really passionate about creating things as I am, so we could kind of feed off each other’s work,” said Mason. “In the beginning, it was more of like a place where we could post our projects, but now it’s bridging towards something more like a collective, and I feel like it’s going to keep shifting.”

Le Team stressed the importance of original content, feeling there is a lack of sites willing to gather artists for regular contributions.

“There’s also an abundance of blogs that are just like visual [inspiration],” said Oliva. “People just re-post their images over and over again and it’s not necessarily their own materials, whereas on Une Banane, everything is created by us from A to Z. There is nothing that we re-post, ever.”

Une Banane has an undeniable Montreal influence, as the name suggests.

“I think the instances of French are kind of whimsical and Dadaist in a way,” said Demers. “I mean, Une Banane was chosen out of nowhere.”

“The column section is a version of the website where people can contribute photography,” said Oliva. “That’s very Montreal-based. We shoot stuff from day-to-day and we do live shoots when we’re on our way to wherever.”

The collective is off to a good start, in its first month seeing 2,000 visits.

Having built up a body of work to garner a certain level of reputation, Une Banane owes itself a launch party. It’s titled Get Nice and it’s happening Friday at Blizzarts with DJ Cosmo.

“Had we done it from day one and [thrown] a launch party, then people would have gone on the site and would have been like ‘okay, there’s nothing on there,’” said Demers. “I guess it’s more of a celebration than a launch.”

Also this weekend, Le Team will be organizing live collaborative contributions from the street. The various locations around the city will be announced at unebanane.com